Los Angeles in 1975, London in 1976, Paris in 1977. Le Orme spent three years making records abroad, and this is the French one — recorded at a studio in Paris in October 1977, and audibly shaped by the trip. The atmospheres of the city surface in several of the stories on it, which the band said outright was deliberate. Pagliuca picks up an accordion. Tagliapietra says a few words in French. The instrumental that closes the album is about a Paris flea market.

The short version

Storia o leggenda was recorded in October 1977 and released on Phonogram. Aldo Tagliapietra sings and plays bass; Tony Pagliuca plays Hammond, Polymoog, Minimoog, piano, harmonium and accordion; Michi Dei Rossi plays drums and percussion; Germano Serafin plays Fender electric and acoustic guitar. The line-up is the same as the previous album, and by now it is a stable quartet with Serafin a permanent member rather than a hired hand. The sleeve is a painting by Walter Mac Mazzieri, who also painted the famous cover of Uomo di pezza.

The year

1977 was the year progressive rock came down. Dance music and punk arrived as the new frontier, and every group that had thrived in the golden period of serious music found itself wrong-footed, holding ideas that a generational change had put out of reach. Le Orme were struggling. That may be why the record can come across as sad and melancholy, as though it reflects the actual state of mind of the men who made it. There is another way to hear the same thing: this is a band who still wanted to play good music and would not give up experimenting or trying to make music mean something.

The sound

It may look very pop next to their early work, and the reason is structural: there are almost no instrumental pieces. Tracks are similar to each other in shape, a reasonable follow-up to the previous album but in a softer and more commercial vein, and the sound of the whole thing is a large question mark. The French colour is what saves it from being anonymous — the accordion sketching the settings, the occasional French phrase, the marimba and the idiophone percussion in the closing piece. Serafin’s guitar work is fine throughout and Il musicista is where you hear it best.

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Al mercato delle pulci

The closer, and the argument of the album. Its first seconds are a forewarning of what was coming with Florian: that acoustic, classical feel, plus the stronger and more characteristic instrumental work of Le Orme, with the drums and bass well forward. It runs four minutes and seven seconds and it is a pity it is so short — this was the idea that deserved developing. One reviewer goes further and says that had the band simply turned the running order upside down, the results and the opinion of a great many prog listeners might have come out differently. He is probably right.

Reception and legacy

Italians are hard on it. One holds that from 1977 the group entered its worst period, releasing this and Florian with much stronger classical influences at a far lower level than what came before. Another, who takes the band seriously enough to be angry, finds the music matching the innocence of its own contents: grandiloquence, obviousness, naivety. Se io lavoro got the airplay. The defence is not that the critics are wrong about the shape of the record but that they are listening for the wrong thing: two years later Florian proved this band were still growing without leaving their roots, and the seed of it is sitting at the end of this album.

The verdict

Worth it late, and worth it for one piece. Al mercato delle pulci first, out of order, because it is the best thing here and everybody agrees. Then Il musicista for the guitar. Then Se io lavoro, to hear what the radio took. Then Florian, which is what the closer was pointing at. This is a transitional record made by four men in a city they were enjoying in a year that had no use for them, and it sounds exactly like that — which is either the problem with it or the reason to hear it.

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